Marga en el DF is a slice-of-life film set during the aftermath of Selena Quintanilla’s death in Mexico City in 1995.The film follows MARGA SALINAS, a Dominican woman who arrives in Mexico City at 21 weeks to surprise her husband for his birthday.
Instead, she is the one who ends up surprised, and what she discovers upon arriving upends everything she believed about her marriage. Over the course of a single weekend, Marga is forced to reckon with who she is and what kind of life she truly wants.
The film is a portrait of a woman at a crossroads, reclaiming herself in grief against the backdrop of a country in mourning. It’s a story about motherhood, identity, and the courage it takes to choose oneself.
Marga en el DF
Marga en el DF
Filmmaker Notes:
Selena Quintanilla was murdered in 1995, the same year I came kicking and screaming into the world. In my household, Selena’s music was gospel. Her voice became a hymn to my childhood long before I could understand what it meant.
In my twenties, I became obsessed with Selena’s story, not the icon, but the woman behind the headline. Her death marked a generation of Latinas who learned about loss collectively. They felt her loss without hashtags or social media to narrate grief, only a deep, shared sense of mourning.
That world feels foreign now. Today, our mourning is curated, often captioned, and shared before it’s felt completely. We mourn in public and then reinvent ourselves in real time.
I began wondering what it meant to fall apart in a world without a witness. What it meant to sit with betrayal, confusion, and longing in solitude. What it meant to rebuild from within. Those questions became Marga’s story.
MARGA EN EL D.F. is a deeply personal film about a woman reclaiming her sense of self. Set in the vibrant, chaotic landscape of 1995 Mexico City in the aftermath of Selena’s death, it follows Marga at 21 weeks pregnant as she confronts betrayal and dares to ask if she can begin again.
Ultimately, this film is a love letter to my mother, my grandmothers, and all the women who learned how to reinvent themselves before it became content. It is a meditation on choice, love, and the quiet courage it takes to start over without an audience.
